With a flick of the wrist

Wouldn’t it be cool if your app worked by magic? Just wave your hand to turn the page in your ebook, go to the next slide of a presentation, or send an email. And if you’ve ever played a video game like World of Warcraft where you had to bind all of your abilities to different key combinations – just think what it would be like to cast your spells with a flick of the wrist rather than ALT-CTRL-F7!

It’s not called magic, it’s called MYO. And it’s coming out this year.

MYO is an armband that reads the subtle electrical signals produced by your body when you flex your muscles. It also senses its own motion. It’s kind of like a next-generation mouse, where your hand isn’t merely guiding a hunk of plastic around on your desk – your hand is the mouse.

The MYO is more intuitive to use than a mouse, provides a finer level of control, and has more points of input. Suddenly, you can fly a plane in a flight simulator by describing its arc with your own palm. It doesn’t even have to be a simulator – hook up a drone to work with your MYO, and you can fly it through the air using your hand as the remote control.

You don’t have to have a complicated virtual-reality application for MYO to be an improvement. Think how nice it would be if your whole desk – or your airplane tray table – worked as a touchscreen for your computer or smartphone. When your body is the controller, anywhere you can go and anything you can do can join the information age.